Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 October 1878 — Harvesting Potatoes. [ARTICLE]

Harvesting Potatoes.

“ Well,” says many a reader, “ don’t anyone know how to dig potatoes?” If they do, but few of them practice It. Many dig them with a sharp hoe, and cut and slash them A potato cut by digging should never be sent to market, nor be eaten after it has lain a week. It is sensitive of a wound. Potatoes should be dug when the ground is dry, on pleasant days, and exposed to the sun and light as little as possible. Exposed for a week by laying on a barn floor or in a pile outdoors, they are not worth half price. They grow in the dark, and to keep them right they must be kept in the dark. WheiTput, in a cellar tliat'Tsaov very dark they should be covered to keep out the light. Potatoes should not only be dug carefully, but handled tenderly. The invention of the steel scoop was unfortunate for potatoes. If handled with a scoop, it should be a wooden one. They must not be thrown or poured so as to bruise them. Pouring from a basket into a barrel is injurious, without it is done with care. And the practice frequently resorted to of conducting potatoes from the wagon by a shute into the bins in the cellar should not be tolerated by any careful man. Digging should be done with a plow, or, if by hand, with a potato-digger, or a broad-tined fork. The Irishman usually takes a sharp-pointed, longhandled shovel, and, if trained, he does it delightfully.— lowa State Register. The opium product of China is increasing so rapidly that fears are entertained by the English that the Indian article will be. supplanted in the Chinese markets. In the opjum-producing districts of China, smokers are estimated to comprise five-tenths of the native male population, and in all China three-tenths of it. There have been public edicts against the cultivation of opium, but they avail little, as the producer silences the official with a fee.